“Bob is having a cardiac arrest!”: Surgeon Simulator 2013 may be the best game ever

Poor Bob fell off his toilet, resulting in urgent need for a heart transplant.

Our own Florence Ion spent the weekend at the San Francisco Global Game Jam and is busily writing about her experience, but we couldn't resist a quick write-up of one of the games that emerged: Surgeon Simulator 2013, by Bossa Studios.

Surgeon Simulator 2013 gameplay.

The game puts the player in the role of a surgeon operating on Bob, who has fallen off his toilet and now requires a heart transplant. The player is positioned above the hapless, draped form of Bob and must manipulate surgical tools and instruments to perform the operation.

The gameplay video above is quite possibly the greatest seven minutes of footage I have ever watched in any medium in all of my 34 years, and it proceeds exactly as one might expect. The narrator's calm voice belies the ridiculousness that unfolds as he flops and flails his way through surgery on poor Bob.

"Oh no, look at that," says the narrator nonchalantly, after spilling an entire container of instruments into Bob's open chest cavity. "This is a minor setback. We all know a real doctor never gives up, no matter the cost."

Eventually, the heart is removed and waved in Bob's face. "Look at this tiny heart," taunts the surgeon, exactly as happens in real life when the surgeon feels your organs don't measure up.

Finally, it is time to add the new heart—"The heart of a baboon!" the surgeon proudly exclaims—but first he must replace Bob's lungs. He manages to get one back into Bob's chest cavity but fails to replace the second. "He will only have one lung," notes the surgeon. "Don't worry. I got this."

The new heart is gently placed in Bob's shattered cavity, after a bit more fiddling with the single lung, and the game quickly ends with a huge congratulatory message.

The game is available for Windows, OS X, and Linux. I'm going to go download it right now and then I, too, will be fully qualified to perform surgery. The video has convinced me that I don't have to let anything stand between me and my dreams.

Lee Hutchinson
Lee is the Senior Technology Editor at Ars and oversees gadget, automotive, IT, and culture content. He also knows stuff about enterprise storage, security, and manned space flight. Lee is based in Houston, TX. Emaillee.hutchinson@arstechnica.com//Twitter@Lee_Ars

If that was the best seven minutes of video you've ever seen, I'm very sorry for you. What I saw was a very amateur video of someone who had no idea what they were doing which included copious cursing for no apparent reason. That's the first time in a long time that I've felt Ars truly wasted my time.

And I still am laughing from when the narrator pulled out Bob's lung after saying "you just need a steady grip". To each his own.

If that was the best seven minutes of video you've ever seen, I'm very sorry for you. What I saw was a very amateur video of someone who had no idea what they were doing which included copious cursing for no apparent reason. That's the first time in a long time that I've felt Ars truly wasted my time.

That's the first time in a long time that I've felt Ars truly wasted my time.

If you actually spent 7 minutes watching that and only THEN felt like it was a wast of your time, then I feel sorry for you, and suggest you work on coming to conclusions faster.

It looks like a simple and fun game that might be interesting for a few minutes. More of a "game" where the challenge is fighting the poor controls more than actually having any skill. It would be fun to play this with a Kinect, but I'm not sure I'd be willing to pay any money for it, given how I'm guessing the novelty would wear off quickly if there's only just the one procedure.

If that was the best seven minutes of video you've ever seen, I'm very sorry for you. What I saw was a very amateur video of someone who had no idea what they were doing which included copious cursing for no apparent reason. That's the first time in a long time that I've felt Ars truly wasted my time.

For some odd reason the way that guy operated on Bob reminded me of the way my friends and I would play Grand Theft Auto at LAN parties back in '98. Objectives be damned, I'm running over some Buddhists.

I tend to agree with thekaj - this looks a lot like you're going to be fighting the controls. In that sense, I was reminded of Jurassic Park: Trespasser.

Given that the surgeon got an A++ though, I suspect it's going to be fairly forgiving!

Kudos to the voice over - I like his style.

Oh, and for those of you were thinking "Screw the video! what's the amazing music!? I'm in awe! I need more of that!!!!!11!!!!", well you need help. And I'm here to give it! It's an old theme tune to the BBC TV Series Casualty. (Our, deeply poor relative of ER with a comedy accident of the week).

Man, it's even harder to play than I guessed. It's comedic on video when shit falls off the table, but I dropped my saw and buzzsaw and hammer in the first minute and then it's just over. I tried to rip the ribs right out of his chest but no go.

Why does the article not talk at all about the game play or rate the game? This reads more like a (marginally) edited press release than a legit story.

Because "...reads more like a..." would indicate that you read even the first paragraph of the article, which you apparently didn't. Either that or you don't know that a game jam is, which puts the fault on you, not the writing, especially since they linked you to the site for it.

For some odd reason the way that guy operated on Bob reminded me of the way my friends and I would play Grand Theft Auto at LAN parties back in '98. Objectives be damned, I'm running over some Buddhists.

I may be completely off base here, but I thought I heard a slight accent in the narration. I chose to believe it was a German accent, which made the video that much more fun. I don't exactly know why. Possibly because of Frankenstein overtones.